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They are the best big guy unless you're also counting mummies. The synergy between Frenzy, Horns and Wild Animal makes them quite formidable, even against other big guys - and on top of that you can easily give them Claws too.

No way pedro, Krox is the best! Stand him there and let him slap those elf sons of bitches with his tail. I'm not a fan of blitzing with your big guy so for me the mino skills are not so valuable. Plus if you go charging around with frenzy and av8 someones gonna sucker you into a gang foul at some point.

Personally, I think the way it's set up now is probably best. It can be disheartening to lose players, grind out matches, get your stars injured and get knocked around the pitch, as it can also be disheartening for bashy teams to have a nimble team just leap away from all the grind and run around to score a touch down in two turns. Also, I tend to find I have trouble coping with almost all opposition, regardless of race.

What's frustrating for us when bad things happen to our teams is part of the elation and rush of success for the opposition and vice versa, if that makes sense? I think it's part of the atmosphere and excitement of the game, and learning how to cope with the various strategies and adversities makes for a richer experience overall. I'm excluding the Goblin and Halfling teams from this idea though, as these teams seem designed for sadomasochists.

The only way I can think of changing it would be to enlarge the groups, increasing the chance of more diverse teams over a season, but obviously then that would increase the time needed to play each season, which is a bit of a sticking point.

No way pedro, Krox is the best! Stand him there and let him slap those elf sons of bitches with his tail. I'm not a fan of blitzing with your big guy so for me the mino skills are not so valuable. Plus if you go charging around with frenzy and av8 someones gonna sucker you into a gang foul at some point.

Beast of Nurgle is the best, obv. And Trolls are pretty good value for money too really, considering you can get a skill or two on them before they get to equal TV with other bug guys.

As for the organisation of the groups, I don't think it should be changed. In complaining about bashy teams seems we're forgetting the other side of the coin: squishy teams can move the ball about in a way most others can't even dream about (gobbos and flings excluded, obviously). It's how the game is balanced overall, and why elfs are so expensive to begin with - without losing players they'd be OP in the long run, trying to mitigate against that is ultimately skewing the pitch against bash teams. If someone wants a team of Block/MB/Claw/PO/Tackle bastards they can build one, but it's going to take them ages while agile teams will be rolling in SPPs.

To be honest I would rather see a bit more cushioning for teams at the bottom of the league, than the top. It can be lethal to a rookie non-bashy team if it ends up surrounded by bashies in its first season, for example. The situation can be just as dramatic when a veteran team is demoted to the starter divisions.

Not sure what can be done about that, perhaps splitting the lowest divisions between certain races where possible, or preventing non-new teams from being demoted to the bottom divisions at all?

...Or maybe a large proto-division beneath at the bottom of the league that runs challenge games only, and has its scores reset at the start of each season? Then the top 2 (plus more to fill) teams at the end of each season could be promoted into the lowest division. This would allow the baby teams to be more discriminating about their competition and prevent veterans coming down from Div 6 and stealing their lunch money.

I dunno, I'm just spitballing. Does anyone else even see this as an issue?

I think you could perhaps achieve this by slightly increasing the division size to six teams. That way it's less likely to have either down-on-their-luck sharks or an entire division of kryptonite teams. The problem with that is we then have trouble keeping the influx of new people participating and might see even more premature promotions with restarting teams.

I'd like to reiterate that I don't mind losing, losing players, et. It's that after a certain point losing players becomes less of a 'risk' than an 'occupational hazard'. Developing a good murderer does take time, because a) they have to survive being targetted (which is where things get tricky with experienced teams; you never want to let an opponent finish building one, and if they do you want to kill it with fire) and b) they're usually bashers rather than ball handlers and thus have low spp gains but are themselves somewhat hard to kill.

If you're facing POMB in your first season something has gone horribly, horribly wrong (or horribly horribly right for your opponent). There's nothing wrong with taking a POMBer (I get urges to make a team of chaos murderdeathbastards myself), and it's certainly a valid strategy. As is T16 fouling one of the champires in the hopes of not having to face it again next season. It's just slightly worrying that you can be ill-prepared to face a gauntlet of them if you're a victim of success and the people in front of you restarting :P

Originally Posted by groovychainsaw

With regards your problems specifically Null, I'm sorry you've been promoted up a bit swiftly. With so many teams to track, I don't always have a good handle on who's gone where over the previous seasons (and I lack TV information when working off the sheet to see an anomaly), and obviously you've been bumped up a bit fast and are hitting a nasty ceiling. The restarts and reboots do make promotions come a bit swiftly sometimes, but I feel the structure is about as good as we can get it for a long-term league with a changing player-base. With the newly-suggested option of you being able to ask to stay where you are, at least this could help your situation somewhat (especially as you keep winning and could end up promoted again - indeed, for all your TV troubles, you seem to be doing ok where you are :-D).

I'm not planning on asking for special treatment, I'm just daunted by the future and highlighting potential issues for other players. I'm happy to lose games and players and will probably fly right into the open flame if the opportunity presents itself. You're also right that my DElf record is pretty nice, retirements or no.

I do think that being able to point out TV differences in the future should help alleviate things. Perhaps we should have a very brief metrics page with TV, playercount, gold reserve and a link to a bbmanager profile if appropriate? Keeping those first three correct at the end of a seson shouldn't be too much trouble for people, and we neatly avoid having to fill out a complete team roster per the previous discussion about 'scouting' potential future opponents :)

I think we'll keep the divisions structured as they are for now, no changes there. I will implement the option for someone to decline a promotion, if they can justify it to me (and I won't be too harsh if it looks like too big a gap). If this means putting TV values into the sheet, we can, but I don't want to have to chase 70 people for this information if I can help it...

As for the bottom divisions, I generally try to organise people so that there aren't any all-bashy or all-agile leagues for the new guys, usually trying to distribute the different team types about. Yeah, it's kinda darwinian and also kinda blood-bowly. You learn to keep your wood elves out of the way fairly quickly :-).

Oh, and piling on + mighty blow could happen quite easily in your first season, if someone decides their their big guy needs it for their first level (topical!). There's a few blitzers who'd not be too foolish picking up mighty blow as their first level, too (all my human blitzers get it, its a bonus multiplier for them!)

The problem with Nullk’s idea is the potential domino effect when Groovy is trying to draw up the divisions. A refusal high up may result in many more further down and just drawing up the divisions could become a real mess.

There is a halfway house that sort of addresses Nullk’s concern about rapid advancement and also would add a bit more context to the games in the lower divisions. Rather than one big column with a point on top how about changing to a series of tiers, each with their own championship division? By making advancement out of each tier optional and allowing rebooting coaches to join the foot of the tier they feel is most appropriate we should be able to take the edge off the Nullk issue without making it a nightmare for Groovy.

Either way I do think it would be good to give beginners a short term goal to aim for. The Championship is many months away at the moment even if they think they’ll ever be good enough to get there. A beginners and intermediate level championship will give some structured goals to target along the road.

Hmm - it will go under consideration for next season. Its a good suggestion Zor, and i'll see if there's any way of doing it without adding to the admin load/ requiring a lot of rework to the in-game divisions. We've managed to keep this thing going for a good long time now and I think a lot of that is due to our structure, so I'm quite attached to it now :-). I agree that a short term goal is nice too, though, given how 'deep' the league structure is. Ill give it some thought. All other suggestions gratefully received, as always...

I was tossing around ideas for six player divisions, too. So in the prem, two stay (champ and runner up) and four get relegated. In all other tiers, two get promoted and two get relegated. However, the idea behind this was actually to increase the mixing. At the moment, 50% of teams change division at the end of the season. Under my six-player thingy, 66% would, as I feel some teams can get stuck in their divisions. Slightly bigger divisions would also allow a little bit less random knockout luck.

I was tossing around ideas for six player divisions, too. So in the prem, two stay (champ and runner up) and four get relegated. In all other tiers, two get promoted and two get relegated. However, the idea behind this was actually to increase the mixing. At the moment, 50% of teams change division at the end of the season. Under my six-player thingy, 66% would, as I feel some teams can get stuck in their divisions. Slightly bigger divisions would also allow a little bit less random knockout luck.

Needless to say, no changes until I win this, okay?

Just to clarify, only in the championship is there a 50% team retention (/50% churn), in lower divs it's only a 25% retention (/75% churn) - barring dropouts, etc of course.

Mr Hutton has the right of it - in a four team divison, at least 2/3rds of the matches definitely count (unlike, for example, in the Open where after 50% of the games, it's clear who still has a chance of winning and who doesn't).

I've certainly enjoyed the rise (and current fall ;)) of my underskilled, overreaching Amazons who were roughly at the same TV last season in the Champ's League as they're now - and I'm getting inducements against you next match, Nullkigan. ;)

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For what my league noob two-penneth is worth, the way the structure is now works without intervention, an infernal machine as I read it described elsewhere. All movement between leagues is automatic, leaving the tactics on the pitch. If you get promoted out of your league, so to speak, then you'll get punted back down in short order and back among your peers. The Darwinian (again, stolen from elsewhere in this thread) progression of a team is, for better or worse, interesting in itself. Teams live and die in a larger scale mirror of the players. Maybe rather than trying to artificially protect teams for longetivity there could be a way of recognising those who have reluctantly retired, a hall of fame for fondly remembered teams gone by where coaches can reminisce and gloat over past glories.

As for nursery leagues to ease new players in, as one of such I'd much rather get stuck in and learn the hard way. If we're that inexperienced then we'll wallow in the minnow leagues among our peers, and if not then we'll be naturally handicapped by confronting better teams. The short term reward is simply winning games and being promoted, or at least striving to, and seeing your team progress.

And there, of course, is simply the chance of mucking up a thriving league that has given several of us much pleasure for a good while, and continues to grow, albeit slowly, season on season. The longer the climb up the ladder the less of an issue it becomes.

I think GC's right: if you don't want the promotion, ask not to have it. Or don't be so darn competent. :)

The Halflings win the toss and elect to kick to the Elves. The elves catch the ball and move to do a fairly standard pass up the pitch to score on turn 4.

Except that around the time they score, there are 4 Halflings off injured. Not so much as a stunned elf at any point thus far.

Ok, outnumbered but not out, the Halflings prepare to receive. The Elves dash forward, knock both treemen to the ground and proceed to kick ten types of stuffing out of the halflings. By the end of the first half, 6 halflings are out injured plus a 7th KO'd, and the Sovereigns are up 2-0, with only a KO paid in return.

Of course, both KOs wake up in the half time break, putting the elves back at full strength.

The Halflings prepare to receive yet again, but once again the Elves surge forward and systematically eliminate the halflings. As they score their third touchdown on turn 12, they have removed every single halfling from the pitch, 8 of them through injuries, 2 through KOs. Despite A bloodweiser babe, neither halfling wakes up and so it's the two lone treemen who face off against 10 elves (1 was KO'd again) in the final drive of the match.

The elves attempt to be greedy and score 2 touchdowns*, but a failed pass in turn 14 means that they have to be content with scoring just the one.

Final score:

Sovereign Right 4 - 0 The Tuftybrushe Fruitcakes

Injury final score: 8-0

I've got a lot of SPP to spend.

Kapouille got Nuffled so damn hard this match. It's really not just a case of halflings being halflings. He got a ton of 2 and even 3D blocks using his treemen and they would just roll AD/BD/Push constantly. I think one of the few times he rolled Defender Down, he of course rolled 3 Defender Downs with a single block, just to spite him. Plus little kicks in the teeth like getting an extra team reroll in turn 8 of the first half, even though he still had 2 left. Or rolling a Both Down and having his halfling injured, while my elf was fine to hop up in the next turn. Anything that could go wrong did, and anything that went right happened at a useless time or place.

Also...I'm terrified. Between the last game and this one, my run of good luck just can't keep going like this. I'm in for a world of pain at some point soon.

*In the first draft of this post, I typed 'KOs' instead of 'touchdowns'. Clearly a Freudian slip.